PATRICK GARRY

Patrick Garry is a law professor with a Ph.D. in Constitutional History. He has written fifteen scholarly and popular audience books in the areas of law, history, politics and religion. Those books have received numerous awards and have been featured in hundreds of media interviews, academic conferences, and book reviews. His general audience books alone have been the subject of dozens of radio and television news programs.

In addition to his works of nonfiction, he has also published eight highly acclaimed books of fiction. Garry’s novels have not only been reviewed by hundreds of professional book reviewers, but they have also received more than 75 different literary awards.

As his writings have grown in prominence and popularity, Garry has become a frequently invited speaker nationwide. He has been invited to deliver more than 200 speeches and presentations at law schools and universities across the country. He has been interviewed by numerous magazines and newspapers, and has appeared on more than 100 television and radio programs. These media interviews focus not only on his books, but also on his social commentary, which has frequently appeared in newspapers and internet news sites.

In his writings and public lectures, Patrick Garry gives a fresh and relevant portrayal of conservative ideals and values. In his nonfiction books on law, Garry explores how courts should interpret the Constitution so as to better fulfill the goals and intentions of that generation of Americans that ratified the Constitution. In Wrestling With God, Garry advances a theory of the First Amendment religion clauses that accommodates the special and recognized role of religion within the constitutional scheme. In An Entrenched Legacy, Garry shows how New Deal liberalism and its big-government agenda have threatened democracy and the constitutional design. And in Limited Government and the Bill of Rights, Professor Garry demonstrates how the limited government principles of the original Constitution infuse and inspire the liberties protected in the Bill of Rights, and thus how those limited government principles can best reveal the meanings behind the various individual rights provisions.

In his general audience books, Garry addresses an array of contemporary social, legal and political issues. In A Nation of Adversaries, he analyzes the debilitating effects of a litigation explosion spurred on by a distorted rights crusade, and examines the social harms resulting from an increasingly adversarial society. In Cultural Whiplash: The Unforeseen Consequences of America’s Crusade Against Racial Discrimination, Garry demonstrates how moral relativism and political interest groups have distorted the initial and laudable goals of the civil rights movement, thus plunging that movement into the kind of divisive politics that prevail today. And in An American Paradox, Garry dissects the hypocrisies of political correctness, exposing its intolerance and anti-liberty attitudes.

In Conservatism Redefined, which examines the future of American conservatism following the 2008 elections, Patrick Garry provides a succinct history of conservative principles and policies, along with an analysis of historical periods when conservatism deviated from its guiding principles. Garry revives those principles into an overarching ideological definition that can unify all the different strands of American conservatism. In doing so, he debunks the leftist charge that conservatism is concerned only with the rich and powerful. Contrasting his common-person conservatism with an elitist liberalism, Garry shows how conservative principles offer the best path to prosperity for the poor and immigrant.

Garry’s political commentary, appearing in numerous online news and political opinion websites, proposes new conservative approaches to problems like poverty, education and unemployment, as well as offering critiques of contemporary culture. But Garry doesn’t just explore conservative ideas through nonfiction books; indeed, he is one of the few living fiction writers whose novels fall within the conservative tradition. Because of this perspective, Garry’s novels are truly unique. And it is this uniqueness that may contribute to the unusually high and favorable attention given to them.

Patrick Garry’s most recent non-fiction book, The False Promise of Big Government, was released on October 23, 2017 by ISI Books.  The book cover is pictured below. For more information on this book, as well as reviews of the book, click on this link or locate it under the Books on Politics and Culture tab on the web site.

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